The Legislature will not return to Albany this week despite Gov. David Paterson’s call for lawmakers to come up with a plan for allocating $600 million in federal education aid passed by Congress last week.

(ICYMI, this is the second item in my DN column this morning. This is an extended version).

In true Albany fashion, each house is blaming the other.

A Senate Democrat insisted Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver nixed a return because he doesn’t want to give the governor the opportunity to bring up the NYSUT-hated property tax cap issue again – particularly not with the September primaries looming in which he stands to lose as many as a dozen majority members.

“Silver does not want to have that argument with his members and put them in harm’s way with NYSUT after the Senate passed the cap and the suburban and Long Island members are agitating to do the same,” a Senate source said.

A top Assembly Democrat trashed that claim, calling it “bullsh–”. He said said the real problem is Senate Democratic leader John Sampson’s inability to get all 32 of his members to come back to the Capitol and agree on anything.

Another Assembly Democrat conceded the truth might lie somewhere in the middle, noting:

“All the crap we didn’t want to pass, but didn’t want to tell members ‘no’ comes up again if we come back. It has nothing to do so much with (Paterson) as our own internal politics. We’re better off to getting to after the primary.”

Paterson said last week the Legislature would have to come back before Labor Day to come up with a plan for spending the $600 million. (He has also threatened to drag both houses back between the primary and general elections in hopes of forcing the Assembly’s hand on the property tax cap).

Technically speaking, the Legislature has 30 days from the date President Obama signed the $26 billion bill to tell Washington how it intends to spend the money and 45 days to appropriate the cash.

The Jewish holidays come early this year, complicating the calendar, but the Senate and Assembly are now tentatively looking at returning to Albany Sept. 16 or Sept. 20.

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